Car-related nightmares? I’ve had a few of the poor choice/moneypit/serial-breakdown variety, but
I’m fortunate to have been spared the dream kind, the real nightmares. Touch wood, I don’t get ’em. No Christine-style car chases and explosions and gory crashes.
But that’s only just one kind of car-dream. They who claim never to dream of cars probably just doesn’t remember their dreams in general. Motor vehicles, the damn things, are all around us all the time; of course they’re in our dreams as well. They’re in mine—have been for years. Most often it’s that red ’78 Chev Caprice my folks owned, usually with minor-to-major surreal differences. As a kid I used to fairly often dream someone was putting leaded gasoline in it, which I knew was wrong. That was sort of foggily disturbing. I never really dug at it to guess what it might’ve meant, if it meant anything; I sort of like the explanation of dreaming’s purpose in this 1967 Popular Mechanics article on the subject (PM and Popular Science at that time imitated each other in every respect, which I guess is why Popular Mechanics had an article about the science of dreaming).
Later on, now, that red Caprice has taken me as close as I’ve ever got to lucid dreaming. I’ve never quite managed it; the nearest I come is Hey, it’s that red ’78 Caprice again; this must be a dream. That’s not much of a magic trick any more; box B-bodies are just about extinct, so if I see one, yeah, pretty good odds I’m dreaming.
And it’s not the only GM B-body to have ever shown up for me. One night in 2007 I inherited a 1960s motorcycle—don’t remember the brand, though it wasn’t Harley-Davidson or Honda…maybe Triumph?—and a late-’70s big Pontiac, both in perfect condition. Don’t know whom I inherited them from. I didn’t recognise where I was; not in the core of a city but not in the far-flung suburbs either, sort of between those two. It was a built-up area with housing, businesses, roads and highway access, but it wasn’t too dense. The weather was nice. I have only a passing, theoretical understanding of how the controls work, but I hopped on the motorcycle anyhow. I couldn’t find the kick starter, but by making the jump-up-and-kick-down motions I’ve seen, I easily got it started. Likewise, I knew that shifting gears is accomplished with the left foot (I think?), pushing down to downshift or pulling up to upshift, but I couldn’t seem to make the shifter work predictably. Nor would the clutch (left hand?) or brake (right hand?) give any physical feedback that they worked. Still, there I was, riding around town easily and without fear. The only real issue was the gearshift: Sometimes I was able to accelerate quickly from a stop, and other times it was slow going. It seemed to be completely random what gear I was in.
I came upon traffic backed up at a long red light and decided to cut down a side street and make a left then a right turn, rather than wait through several cycles of the light. But, once on the side street, I found I wouldn’t be able to make my desired turn any time soon. I ducked into the semicircular driveway of a hotel and buzzed a catering crew who were unloading their truck preparatory to some gala event or other. I didn’t, y’know, trash anything or cause any direct damage, but I did ride inappropriately fast through the narrow corridor between the truck and the staging tables on which they’d put all their equipment. I was amused; they were not.
Then somehow or another I was in the Pontiac, repeatedly getting on and off the highway. This required extreme acceleration, for the on-ramps were unrealistically short. The car was more than capable of coping, and I found myself accelerating faster and more than necessary. A couple of times I found myself closing in on cars ahead, and it seemed to me I was getting imprudently close to them before applying the brakes, but I never had to brake in a panic, and didn’t cause any crashes. As I was driving along the highway, I thought to myself the car would make an excellent candidate for conversion from gasoline to propane power and made a mental note to contact someone I know who is experienced in that art.
Then I was done with the highway, out of the car, and I had a couple of papers in my hand. One was a printout of an email, a response from someone who actually exists to a post I’d made to a (real) internet mailing list, describing the motorcycle. His email contained the contact information for a vintage [whatever brand it was] motorcycle collector’s group, and said to check the cycle and engine numbers because “You’re not supposed to ride bikes with serial numbers between [two 6- or 7-digit numbers] with engine numbers between [two 5- or 6-digit numbers] from 1963-1965 at present”.
I had a bright yellow cover for the motorcycle, and I paused in the middle of installing it to look at the other paper I had in my hand. It was also bright yellow, and was an invitation to a shindig being held by some long-in-practice doctor. A cardiologist, I think. It was for his 50th year in practice, and promised more food than you can possibly stuff in and for the kids: weddings, movies, etc. And boat rides. It was the event I’d buzzed on the motorcycle, I realised.
Earlier this month, Paul show-‘n’told about a surreal 12-passenger Dodge station wagon—his kind of weird dream car. I have very vivid dreams about cars that are invariably wild and crazy and make no sense, he said. Me, too. Mine aren’t the pink-elephant variety like that 12-passenger wagonoid, but I’ve dreamt of cars utterly true to waking-life reality, down to every last tiny detail…except the doors somehow opened inward instead of outward. It worked perfectly in the dream, and it seemed completely ordinary, but while I remember where in the parking lot of which particular Denver-area supermarket this metallic green ’93 Subaru Legacy sedan was parked, I can’t recall how those doors worked—just that they did.
Now what about you? What are your best car dreams? Your worst ones? Trucks and buses and motorcycles count. Self-propelled lawn mowers, too.
Intriguing question. My good dreams are few and far between, for various reasons, but fortunately not many of my bad ones include cars. I do remember a couple, though, all involving driving up a large hill/mountain/ramp and sloooowly losing momentum before reaching the top, and careening or flipping back down out of control. Not sure what they mean, but certainly nerve-wracking at the time. No specific model of car, though. Just something that can’t make it up a hill.
Not best; not worse. But definitely recurring.
Over the years, regardless of where I have lived, regardless of what I was doing in my life, this dream continues to pop up to this day.
I’m in a garage (maybe mine – not sure – after all when I lived in Manhattan I had no garage) and I notice a previously unnoticed door. Upon opening this door I see the dusty, decaying, remains of my first car, that big yellow 1953 Chrysler convertible from COAL #1.
And I must get it running.
Oh my god, what a mess; 4 flat rotten tires, an inch of dust on all surfaces, and (in my mind) clearly gelled up fuel tank, fuel lines, and carb, a very dead battery, and probably dry, desiccated and/or leaking engine, transmission, and other drive-line seals under the car, 50 year old engine oil and brake fluid (probably frozen brakes), and a leaky top where the hydraulic up and down mechanism never worked even when it was in active running condition.
And here’s odd thing. As when I owned the car in the early 1960s, I have insufficient funds for a professional mechanic to set things right so I must do all this remedial work myself. Oh… this is going to take forever. How do I even move it?
It never occurs to me in this dream to just close the door and walk away.
GOOD MORNING – THIS IS WNYC 93.9 ON YOUR FM DIAL – MICHAEL HILL WITH YOU THIS MORNI……
Saved by the radio.
Not a convertible and not yellow – but you get the idea.
I had a fairly lucid dream that took place in the city of Stanwood, Washington. I was driving in a plain white 92-96 Ford F-150 XL. I noticed an open field where I knew a shopping center had been built. I knew then that I was in a dream.
I drove all around town, and nothing I did seemed to bother anyone. I even drove on the rail road tracks for a while. Nobody noticed or cared if they did, and the truck wasnt bothered by me hitting the tracks or curbs or fields, it just drove normally.
It was almost like being a kid, playing with a toy truck in a city still looking very much like it did when I was a kid.
The only nightmare I can remember is being in a car and not being able to see out of the windshield, but feeling compelled to drive forward (or was already driving forward) where I couldn’t see. This has happened several times and apparently in several cars. I’d be approaching the top of a hill and it was like I shrank in my seat and couldn’t see over the dash hardly at all anymore, for example. They were all variations on a theme of not being able to see but having to drive forward anyway.
This only dreams I can remember recently that I’ve had recently involved me driving either my 97 F150, 88 F150 and a Orange Schneider Freightliner. I currently own the 88 F150. I haven’t had the 97 for almost 15 years. I drove for Schneider from 2004-14.
Great topic.
The couple of motoring-related dreams that I can remember are decades old, but were very recurring then.
One dream involved me, for whatever reason, having to drive backwards at very high speeds, on very narrow roads. The whole scene was in black and white and a little cartoonish-looking.
The generic car of no particular real type was very front-heavy, and it was difficult to control around the hills and curves, like it wanted to complete a reverse-180 turn (that my mind obviously used memories of from my early hooning days) to realistically terrify me.
For whatever reason I had to do this for hours (in dream time) and when I woke up I was tired from the mental gymnastics required to not crash.
Very realistic physics and very primitive production values were hallmarks of my dreams back then. My brain didn’t choose black and white for any noir-ish styling reason, it just didn’t produce very good video. The sensations of the movements, however, were top-notch realistic.
I don’t recall any dreams involving cars, but I tend not to remember dreams very often.
But I do have nightmares involving airplanes, and being back in university not knowing what room my exam was in.
Even though I’ve been out of school/college for nearly 50 years, I still have those student dreams, not knowing where to go for my classes, forgetting entirely about attending class until the final exam, deciding to wing it on a final exam, or finding out at the last minute that I don’t have enough credits to graduate.
Check! √
Check! √
Check! √ (my version is finding out I still have an open/pending course of study that I never finished or formally suspended, but just sort of walked away from years ago).
And then there’s the one where I don’t know where my locker is, or it’s not where it’s meant to be, or I’m back at the school after numerous years because I left something in my locker, and I don’t remember where it is, or what the lock combination is, and anyhow the whole school’s been remodelled so all the lockers are in different places…
These kinds of dreams seem widely common.
I used to have the dreams about finding myself in class only to discover that it’s the end of the term and the exam, and I’ve never been to class. All the time.
Now, I constantly have dreams about having signed up for a bunch of courses in college, but forgetting to go to class…and wondering if I’ll ever be able to graduate. Somehow, never actually graduating has nothing to do with my ability to live on campus. Wherein comes the car part of the dream.
(There’s also a recurring part about having to clean out the refrigerators at the end of the year before leaving campus, and throwing out all of the food that I forgot to eat, just like I forgot to go to class…but I’ll spare you that part.)
I have recurring dreams of renting ginormous UHaul trucks that are required for moving all of my stuff at the end of a school year. The big giant box trucks with “Mom’s Attic” over the cab, the ramp that slides up under the rear bumper, the plywood walls inside. And naturally a standard transmission (just like the ones my family used to move with back in the 70s). There’s always some complication about how I’m going to go pick up the truck and what I’m going to drive to the UHaul place. It’s very detailed.
Mind you, in real life, I prided myself on never having more stuff at college than I could fit into my enormous Buick. It was a real point of pride to be totally portable. Man did that change after college….
Which is no-doubt why I have rental truck nightmares.
I remember my dad renting a manual transmission GMC Uhaul in the late 90s. I remember because it stalled on a steep hill and I was amazed at his skill of getting it going again without rolling back or causing it to stall himself.
I haven’t had student-related dreams for a long time, but I did get them until about 15 years after I graduated from university. Most common was showing up for class for the first time in a week or two only to learn there was an exam that day I hadn’t studied for (which happened to me in real life once too), or realizing about two-thirds into the semester that I’d forgotten I’m enrolled for a particular class and never attended them at all.
Same here, 10-15 years after I completed school, I’d still have an occasional dream that I was still there. Sometimes with people I’d met long afterwards, looking as we do now, as though school was just a never-ending thing for us.
It certainly felt like it at the time. Maybe that’s the cause of the dreams, haha! Some “fear” that I’m still there, or will have to return eventually? It was not that traumatic, just mostly unpleasant.
Anyone who’s been to university has had a variant of that dream LOL.
Mine usually involve end of year at final time, and I realize I have not attended
a certain class once during the semester….
Same here, all of the above. Still happens from time to time.
I have recurring problematic dreams about cars (I wouldn’t call them out-and-out nightmares):
I’m driving slowly in reverse, apply the brakes, but the car never completely stops. It keeps going and going, never fully stopping. The only way I can finally end the process is to engage first gear, but only if the car so happens to have a manual transmission.
I am on a freeway, but the road leads to a convoluted mandatory offramp that ends in a rest stop. Inevitably, I lose control on a sharp curve and run off the road.
I am trying to drive the car from the back seat or front passenger seat but of course can’t reach the foot pedals (there seems to be no driver seat present).
I am driving a manual transmission car but am unable to control the clutch properly and either can’t get moving forward or can’t make the shift from first to second gear.
The car is on a lift at my former workplace, but it becomes unstable and starts turning and twisting, threatening to fall off.
My car dreams are almost always about cars I previously owned, except for one wonderful Simca Aronde dream. Most of them end with brakes failing as I zoom down a steep hill. Push and push, no hydraulics, just about ready to……….. wake up.
I can recall two or three times in recent years where I rediscover that somehow I still have the 71 Plymouth Scamp I had in college. It is still a good car, and I wonder to myself why I haven’t driven it more.
I would actually kind of like to find a strange corner of my garage where my old Scamp awaits my attention. But I think it might require a little more work to get it on the road than is the case in my dreams.
Yess! The hidden/previously-unknown part of the garage (for cars; the parts are in a hidden/previously-unknown part of the basement).
Rediscovery dreams are the best kind, whether it’s cars or radios or a previously unknown room in the house!
1-Car is on a narrow causeway and steers itself into the water
2-Car goes missing from where I parked it and walk all over town looking for it
3-Car IS where I parked it but stripped
4-Car loses power gradually until no forward motion
5-I’m at a dealer—I have a bank account full of money, but some unseen
and undefined force is preventing me from buying-These are all recurring
The best car dream I ever had was a one-off in about 1977 as a teen, and still remember.
I was rescuing some girl and we were in a 1974-76 (Gran Torino-type) black Ranchero , which I knew to have a 460.
To escape the compound holding us back, I had to punch and ram through a chain
link fence and got air born fleeing some nebulous and undefined villains .
I attribute it to weekly watchings of Starsky and Hutch.
I forget most of my dreams after a few days, but most of the car dreams involve cars I used to drive or own, with the long gone ’66 Polara wagon my family had when I was growing up sometimes showing up (those are sweet). Or my first car (a green ’82 Pontiac J2000 LE sedan), sometimes complete with my then-gf riding shotgun or otherwise with me. Some of these lately are increasingly nightmarish, like my most recent car dream from a few nights back where I’d left my car (but parked for a few weeks in a nearby lot, returning to find a fender or bumper missing (and a few parts incorrect for the car like a non-fitting or reversed rear window – the only car dream I’ve had where the car was mangled like that). At least in that dream I realized that was my old decrepit Mercury Tracer that was only worth part-out money rather than the Golf I own now, I often have dreams where I’ve forgotten I’ve parked it illegally or such, i.e. parked in a no-parking-during-daytime spot at night and then waking up the next day (easy to do where I used to live). Yes, I sometimes wake up from a dream in a dream.
Oddly, I often find my in-my-dreams home looking nothing like any place I ever lived, but the cars are almost always real cars from my past.
The Real-life Background:
I had this beloved ’71 Corolla (4-speed, 1600) which I stupidly sold after I was unable to find the source of a major oil leak.
The ’71 Biscayne I replaced it with was a disaster – the engine blew a week after I bought it, and it was gutless (250 inline-6 1-bbl and Powerglide) and very hard on gas.
The Dream:
The Corolla shows up regularly in happy dreams – I find it parked in a farmyard or country road where I suddenly remember I had left it.
The key is in the ignition, and it starts immediately and runs flawlessly.
The Biscayne has not yet appeared in a dream.
*******
Daniel, thanks for the linked PS article – I found it very interesting. The idea that we need part of our sleep to process and act out a bit of craziness is fascinating.
Some years ago I read that dreams only last about 20 seconds. It says something about our mental processes that so much intensity can be packed into such a short duration.
“Most often it’s that red ’78 Chev Caprice my folks owned”
My car dreams usually have the same theme — in my case they most often involve the blue 1979 Corolla wagon my dad used to own. Usually in the dream my folks never sold it, and still have it around, and I decide to take it for a drive even though I own a newer and more modern car. In the most recent occurrence of that dream Dad had decided to pass the Corolla down to me, and I’m planning on restoring it.
Right now it’s just owning a decent reliable ride built after 2016!
My all time favorite car, my black 1972 240Z, was totaled by an idiot in a Ford truck in 2003. It’s been a few months, but Ive had the dream for years… I find it parked, covered in dust. The damage, which in reality ruined the entire hatch and taillights and bent the body hard enough to jam the doors shut… is a dent which easily could be fixed. I fumble for the key, which is of course in my pocket, and the Z fires right up. I swear I can smell the exhaust when I wake up..
I had a dream/nightmare years ago where I was fixing my ever breaking something ’77 Power Wagon. I fixed whatever it was, got in, went down the road, and something else broke. It kept repeating and repeating, I never got where I was going, I just moved a little bit down the road. I woke up with a cramped jaw from clenching my teeth.
Sad thing is, the only difference between the dream and reality was the frequency of it breaking something, and me not getting somewhere. It only was undrivable a couple of times in the 4 long years I had it.
Not many of my dreams seem to contain cars, but when I was a teenager (in the late 80s) I had a recurring dream wherein I was driving an old white VF Chrysler Valiant ute with ‘jelly bean’ mags round and round a small hill (with a house on top) in a paddock. The hill and house were real and were 5-6km from my parents house, and there was a similar Valiant ute in town that belonged to a retired plumber. I didn’t even like Valiant utes then, so no idea why I had that same dream so many times!
How about dreaming while IN a car? I was driving on the Tri-State Tollway (in those days, it was pay-cash-as-you-go) and dangerously drowsy around 2 or 3 am. Pulled over ahead of a toll gate & jammed myself in a horizontal position across the front seats and gearshift of a Renault Alliance with seats that did not recline as it was the base model. Awoke in terror believing I was still driving & had somehow gone sideways with the loud and real sound of a decelerating 18-wheeler (slowing for the toll gate) in my head.
I’ve pulled over due to dozing off, had a loud noise startle me when not quite asleep, and I was wide awake from then on. Adrenaline pumping, heart racing. Works better than coffee, but I’d prefer the coffee route.
Good thing Sigmund Freud isn’t around.
He would declare most (if not all) of us crazy.
I don’t recall ever having any car dreams outside of the basic I imagine myself owning that car or this car. Those may actually be more day dreams then dreams while sleeping at night.
The most interesting car-related dream I had was one where I was reassured there would be old Cadillacs in heaven/the afterlife/whatever you would like to call it. Before I got to that part, there was a bunch of other interesting stuff about the transition, some of which involved walking with a large group of people on an upward-sloped passageway that looked like a huge airplane jetway, with some kind of temporary gravity inversion partway up.
In any event, after the transition I found myself driving a red ’75 Coupe de Ville with a white vinyl top along a sort of coastal highway. The windows were open and the air was impossibly clean and sweet-smelling, like no place on earth I know of. I became worried that I was polluting that crisp air with that gas-guzzling beast, and A Voice From On High told me that it was OK, not to worry, gas and pollution were not a problem in heaven, somehow.
I had this dream the night after the Virginia Tech campus shooting. I had a lot of trouble getting to sleep because the event had particularly unnerved me, as I have been in the buildings where people were shot. I think my unconscious mind needed to construct a scenario where everything came out OK in the end.
Wow, sharp and vivid! Those kinds take me awhile to process, too.
I’m driving in reverse, while everyone else is in drive. I’m going the same direction as all the other traffic, but I’m driving in reverse gear.
Each time I have the nightmare, I’m going with the flow of traffic in reverse, at 70+ MPH. I’m on US131 southbound, I’m fighting to back the car through the S-curve, in beautiful downtown Grand Rapids Mi. Using only my rear view mirror to see wear I’m going.
I always wake up just as I give up, and I’m about to crash.
Whee! That sounds like a fun one. What’re you driving, can you tell?
The model is not always clear. I remember 1 of times it happens in my wife’s car.
To make matters worse, a sudden downpour hits as I’m entering into the S-curve. I have to turn on the rear wiper pronto. I get all screwed up because the rear wiper switch works thus; on=up. off=down. That’s opposite to my car. I panic because I can’t see were I’m going out the back window. I bail out on the scene, and wake up.
I take the Beltline to work the next morning after.
Not in a long time now, but I’d occasionally dream of pressing the brake pedal and it going all the way to the floor. But then, I had more than one car from a long time ago do just that to me…
The ’78 Caprice is interesting in that my Dad owned one (well, a Caprice Classic wagon) that was the only car he ever bought out of the showroom, and it was probably the plushest car he ever owned (well, adjusting for options which have become standard with time anyhow). He was in the market for a replacement for his ’73 Country Sedan, took a look at the new downsized ’79 Ford Wagons, and instead decided to buy a leftover ’78 Caprice Classic. It had the 305, and the deluxe instrument cluster which included a vacuum gauge for fuel economy. It was his last wagon, and he owned several nice Mercuries (3 Sables in a row) and 2 Impalas (Mom still has his last one, he’s gone now) but I think the Caprice was the nicest…though he never owned an outright luxury car. His was more of a burgundy color, and it did have the wood paneling (our Country Sedan did not).
In terms of dreams, I seem to “forget” about a car, usually one I’ve owned in the past (not much choice, as I’ve only owned 5 cars in 48 year of driving) then somehow I realize that I haven’t been driving it. Most often it is my ’78 Scirocco, which I really liked, but admittedly is a young person’s car, wouldn’t suit me today, but details like that don’t come up in the dream…maybe I’m younger too. Or I’ll end up driving somewhere I haven’t been in years…since we moved around a lot in my younger years, someplace far from where I live now but I used to go years ago…and I kind of forget the way. Kind of like my parent’s home town, which I’ve been to probably hundreds of times, but never actually lived there. My Dad of course did the driving when I was a kid, and I had to eventually pay attention once I started driving myself so I could navigate…many of the roads are narrow winding ones but everyone who lives in the area of course knows the main ones well, a bit of a challenge if you aren’t familiar (at least in the days before GPS was common). One time I was driving with my Dad on a stretch of road in a town we hadn’t lived in since the early 60s, and I immediately recognized it, not so much as one we used to drive on, but more because my Mother used to take us walking along the side of the road…at the time Dad only had one car, so during the day if my Mother needed to go shopping, we would walk….a few years later Dad got his first 2nd car and when my younger sister was born we no longer walked to stores (well, kind of did, we didn’t have a school bus and had about a mile walk each way to school, which was next to a large shopping center…we repeated the trip 4x/day since we ate lunch at home….much slower when snow was on the ground (much of the year) and much faster when I was finally allowed to ride my bicycle to school.